One of the biggest talking points towards the end of the first day of The Open Championship was the pace of play, with the later starters facing a race against time to get their rounds completed at Royal Portrush.
It proved to be a fascinating opening day at The Open Championship. A number of surprise names top the leaderboard, while Scottie Scheffler is lurking just behind. Rory McIlroy meanwhile, is very much in the mix.
At the other end of the leaderboard, Bryson DeChambeau is facing a real uphill battle just to make the cut in Northern Ireland. So there are plenty of storylines heading into Friday.
But one of those storylines concerns how slow the rounds became later in the day.
Tyrrell Hatton reacts to the slow play during the first round of The Open Championship
The group of McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Thomas took four and a half hours to reach the 13th hole. Meanwhile, there were plenty of television pictures showing players waiting on tees.
Of course, Tyrrell Hatton often needs little encouragement to get wound up on the golf course. But the Englishman seemed to take quite a measured view of the situation following his first round.
He said: “Yeah, I think just with the conditions, I know it wasn’t super windy. It picked up as the round went on a bit. But it’s hard, there’s a few bottleneck areas where you’re reaching par fives in two, and that generally slows things down. I don’t really know what you can do with the field size. It’s, what, 154 is it?
“Yeah, I don’t even know if the guys that are last out will get finished today, which is a shame. But yeah, it was very slow, and it kind of felt like you couldn’t eat enough, to be honest.
“I would say the tee shot on seven, that felt quite hard because we waited a very long time there. But for the rest of the round, it didn’t feel too bad in terms of getting out of sync. It was only really on the 7th tee that I noticeably felt a bit stiffer for waiting so long.”
How Tyrrell Hatton dealt with the stoppages in play at Royal Portrush
Hatton can certainly take a lot of positives from his first round. The Englishman posted a 68 to leave himself just one shot off the lead.
He went into the week having been right in contention down the stretch on Sunday at the US Open. And his form on LIV Golf has been fairly good throughout the year.
His ability to deal with the setbacks is remarkable given how frustrated he can get. And he explained how he coped with the long breaks between shots.
“I don’t know. I think you just chat with your caddie and your playing partners. Everyone is in the same boat of kind of waiting. It’s almost just taking your mind off — well, you’re just having a chat. Sometimes you forget your surroundings in a way. I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” he said.
It seems as if he is in a good place right now. It would be little surprise to many if Hatton was the man lifting the Claret Jug on Sunday.
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